Midwesterner's simply have the worst taste for food. How one can even consider "Culvers"?? When I told someone I was driving to Chicago they said: "You gotta stop at the Norske Nook" Wow - it's bad - slop.

If you find yourself traveling, it's better to have a cooler, some bread, cheese and cold cuts that it is to waste your time on these 'resturants'. It's also a hell of a lot quicker.

The other option is to find a super market, and buy some decent fresh food from the deli.

Ah, this kind of attitude is exactly why it was such a relief to leave Boston after living there for five years.

In defense of the the Norske Nook -- the pies are really quite good, down to the crusts, the inevitable downfall of restaurant pies. I can't whole-heartedly endorse the food, it's true, but they sell themselves as a pie place, and they deliver.

In defense of Culver's -- have you actually eaten there, or do you just reflexively hate something so harmlessly unassuming? If you like thin, well-done burgers -- which I do, as opposed to the "semi-raw ball of meat" model -- ButterBurgers are tasty as hell, and Culver's frozen custard is entirely respectable. Yes, it's a chain; so are In-and-Out and H&H. Another thing I'll say for Culver's -- their counter staff is polite and competent to a level that's almost unheard of among fast food joints. I realize that in Boston and parts of New York, the norm is "service with a snarl," but I kind of like dealing with pleasant, competent staff people.

Gee Doug, thanks for enlightening us philistines. All this time I have been living in some food false consciousness.

I don't know where you're from on the east coast, but Culvers butter burgers are just as good as NYC's Shake Shack and DC's Five Guys which seem to attract the locals in droves, no?

As for the post, I think this is really useful information Jim. That brat sounds absolutely delicious.

Take a look at the Culver's Bacon Butter Burger:

1100 calories, 621 calories from fat, 115% of you daily saturated fat allowance, 1912 mg of sodium. Probably the only vegatable is the ketchup and pickle.

This food is bad for anyones health.

http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/item/59808.html

Whoa there, Tex -- way to demolish a strawman. I wasn't defending Culver's as healthy; moreover, what I order, personally, is a single butter burger. That's 346 calories. Go to nearly any restaurant, anywhere, and find the unhealthiest thing on the menu, and you'll be shocked at how bad it is for you. The key difference is that fast food places actually make their nutrition information readily available.

Granted, it's not health food, and you shouldn't eat these things as anything other than an occasional indulgence. But as indulgences go, they're pretty delicious.

So it's not actually about TASTE, it's about HEALTH? I'm sure you remind anyone you see puffing on a cig that smoking is bad for their health, too. Champions of free will really love to hear that stuff.

Good luck with your fascist crusade.

You're proving my initial point: Midwesterner's place little priority on food.

There's no reason food cannot be tasty, satisfying, and look good. Taste and healthfulness are not mutually exclusive. People who enjoy good food understand and look for balance. People with undeveloped taste go for the fried / sweet / salty foods.

Culver's plus a ton of other fast food establishments are turning out god awful food that will ruin your health. Eating one of those burgers is like drinking a shot of grease. Then wash down that shot with a soft drink - yuck.

Do I care if you do this? Not at all. But to me it shows poor judgement and taste.

doug, i don't know how you making this into a midwestern thing. and i cannot believe how dumb you think the average person is--apparently incapable of making a conscious decision about what they put in their body.

i lived in nyc for six years and can't say that people are very health conscious there. a mcdonalds on every corner. pizzas by the slice. coffee with milk, 8 spoonfuls of sugar, and donut/muffin/bagel for breakfast . heroes packed to the gills with boar's head ham and water product, mayo, and mustard. delicious half pound medium rare hamburgers. chinese food coming out your ears. kids spending pocket change of penny candy. give me a freaking break.

don't go lumping everybody who enjoys the OCCASIONAL indulgence into the undeveloped taste category. taste should be nuanced, and since when is "salty" in the avoidance category? every chef who's anybody will tell you the more salt the better.

i've been all around this country, and minneapolis is certainly the most taste conscious city i know--why the huge farmers' market, why the coop's, why the locavore restaurants, why are we reading a blog about food of all sorts?

Mr Norton,

The reason I read City Pages, is to find the undiscovered little gems. That's your job - to dig those out.

The problem I have with this review is it's not honest. When I questioned your review of the Norske-Nook you stated "I can't whole-heartedly endorse the food". So one is to venture off the interstate for pie? To me pie isn't a meal. It's one small component.

James states: "If you like thin, well-done burgers" you mean gray inside? And continues: "as opposed to the semi-raw ball of meat model". I don't think you know how to cook. The ubiquitous hamburger is probably the most boring of all american foods. Go to Lunds, buy 85% / 90% / 95% lean ground beef. Fry pan, range, 10 minutes later you have a burger. Is there some sort of mystery? Maybe I missed it?

James continues: "and Culver's frozen custard is entirely respectable". The closest I could find was the Culver's Vanilla Waffle cone. It supplies a whopping 135% (27 grams) of saturated fat - 86% of your daily cholesterol, that's 1 ounce of saturated fat! Besides, it's not ice cream, hell it's not even ice milk. Then I went to Ben and Jerry's - their vanilla cone has only 9gm of saturated fat, 20% of your daily cholesterol - also it's real ice cream.

I am not a health food nut. I hardly ever lookup these stats. But my good taste easily tells me that places like this are to be avoided.

If I'm going to indulge, atleast it's gonna be really good.

Go to California, Culver City, San Francisco, you can get great food, tasty, light, satisfying, inventive, imaginative food.

I'm sorry Brian, it is a midwest thing.

East coast Doug, or is it East Coast Dummy? I didn’t care much about your snobbish food opinions but when you demonstrate your ignorance by critiquing Frozen Custard as being not even ice cream, you got me. Yes!, frozen custard is NOT ice cream, that’s why it’s called frozen custard! It is generally better than ice cream.
Now, let’s look at your biased misrepresentation of the nutritional values of both. You compared servings in a cone, it would be farer to compare them without the cone. Scoop against scoop. (By the way, how is it that you could only find Culver's Vanilla Waffle cone when their entire menu is out there?) I also checked out the serving sizes and adjusted the numbers to compensate for the fact that Culver’s gives you more. Imagine my surprise to find that Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla actually contains more fat, saturated fat and fat from calories per oz than does Culver’s. B & J does have a slight edge on the cholesterol amounts. This is silly, of course, because we are arguing about the nutritional values of deserts, but you brought it up.